Project Overview

The topic of mental health is something our team was passionate about and as someone who suffers from anxiety and depression, I was eager to explore this design space. The initial goal of our project was to figure out how we could help working professional women improve their mental health and with three of our group members identifying as female, we believed that we could bring perspective and empathy to this topic.

Initial Design Question

We began with a broad design question focusing on the mental well-being of professional women.

However, as our user research progressed, we realized that we would need to adjust our design questions to focus on a specific need of a wider range of users. More on this later.

User Research

Our team conducted four types of user research to explore and define the problem space and to help us empathize with our target users: working professional women. These methods included surveys, user interviews, card-sorting, and secondary research.

Survey

I was tasked with the responsibility of creating the survey which our team first deployed via Google Forms to various women in our network. The purpose of the survey was to get an idea of the various trends and perceptions across our target users within a relatively short amount of time. Due to the sensitive nature of the topic of mental health, I designed the survey to be relatable and unobtrusive. Some items were drawn from the Perceived Stress Scale, a widely used scale for clinical stress research.

We received 21 responses and the majority of responses were from women between the ages of 18-34 with various professional backgrounds.

The survey results gave us many helpful insights about our target audience’s contexts, behaviors, and frustrations. To summarize a few of our findings:

• more than 60% of all participants reported “often” or “fairly often” feeling anxious, depressed, and/or sad.

• meditation, exercise, and talking to friends seemed to be the most popular form of dealing with negative emotions

• 76% of participants had not sought mental healthcare in the recent past because they were either too busy, that mental healthcare was too expensive, or that they did not feel the need for mental healthcare at this time

User Interviews

To probe further, we conducted five user interviews with working women aged 22 to 32 with different cultural and professional backgrounds. Based on the participants’ availability and preference, we talked with them either face-to-face or online. Based on the participants’ availability and preference, we talked with them face-to-face or online. Even though the interviews were conducted by different researchers, we developed a general interview structure applied across all interviews. Our interviews incorporated IDEO’s 51 Methods including “Foreign Correspondent” and “Five Whys”.

Our interviews provided us with more valuable insights about our target users.  At a high-level, these users aspire to gain a sense of achievement, a sense of control and recognition of their value. Their frustrations mainly come from unhealthy interaction with other people, and the loss of balance when juggling between self-care, life, and work. As a behavior pattern, they find it particularly helpful to talk to a trustworthy person (close friends, therapists) and having someone backing them up.

Card Sorting

After gathering initial exploratory insights from surveys and interviews, we conducted a card sort to put ourselves in the user's shoes—this helped us to align our understanding of our target user's mental models about their core values, high-level needs and drives when it comes to maintaining mental health wellness.

The card sorting  process was completed in three steps. In the first step, our team identified user's  key values from previous research using brainstorming and affinity mapping with post-it notes. In the second step, we conducted a card sorting study on Optimal Workshop. Lastly, we analyzed the card sorting responses, and voted for the top-one value our minimum viable product (MVP) is going to primarily focus on.

The results of the card sorting are valid and reliable because we collected a significant size of responses (47 valid, from the United States) and eliminated bias by diversifying the audience (on various demographic dimensions, including location, profession, age, etc.). The card sorting results are summarized in the  similarity matrix shown below.

Secondary Research

Our fourth research method was utilizing secondary research as a way to further understand our users needs, mental health, and potential design solutions for intervention. We retrieved articles from valid sources (such as the American Psychological Association, as well as academic journals) on topics such as the mental health of women, stress reduction digital activities, and art therapy.

One particularly interesting and enlightening research paper was on the topic of Thought Disposal as a method for reducing stress in teens. This study was conducted by Elin Bjorling at the University of Washington. This paper would later be critical in the inspiration behind our final design solution.

User Persona

Based on the findings in our user research, we created our primary persona Susan to stay anchored to our user’s needs as we moved through the design process.

Meet Susan

A single woman in her 30s, working as an accountant. She is currently struggling with anxiety and desires to have more confidence and a sense of balance in her life. She is busy because of her job and she feels her social circle is shrinking as she gets older. She doesn’t always feel like she can reach out to her friends about her worries and anxieties.

Redefining the Scope and Design Question

Our initial design question:

“How might we help working professional women improve their mental well-being?”

helped to form the direction of our research.

Focusing on this initial question, our user research from surveys, interviews, and card sorting activity revealed three areas that were essential for mental wellness in women:

1) People often struggle to find meaning and purpose in their lives. 

2) People often feel frustrated while trying to stay motivated and in control of their goals and personal struggles. 

3) People have difficulty finding connection and often feel alone when dealing with when dealing with personal struggles.

These frustrations and difficulties manifest into worries and anxieties that affect overall mental well-being.  Our users need help in processing and overcoming these negative thoughts and feelings in order to attain better mental health. 

Our team felt that, as a whole, these themes were not exclusive to working professional women. So we decided that we should focus on helping anyone deal with their negative emotions in a healthy and reflective way.

As such we modified our Design Question into:

Ideation

Our team spent two sessions brainstorming and sketching features and ideas for our design solution. Our original brainstorming session produced 24 sketches and our team voted on the ideas that we thought should be in the Wello design.